Canada loses bid for more tuna, rebuffs push to protect sharks

Canada’s attempt to increase the amount of a vulnerable species of tuna that can be fished out of the Atlantic Ocean has been shot down by other countries but Canadian negotiators have managed to block international efforts to protect an endangered type of shark.

Officials with the Federal Department of Fisheries were in Morocco over the past week to take part in a meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, which is responsible for protecting the stocks of tuna and other similar species that live in the Atlantic.

That includes the massive Atlantic bluefin tuna, which the federal government is considering labelling as an endangered species under the Species At Risk Act and which scientists around the world say is in need of protection. The Canadian government has said fishing is the main threat to the tuna’s viability and, despite efforts for the past 30 years to rebuild the population, there is little sign of an increase.

Still, Canada proposed at the ICCAT meeting that the quota for bluefin caught in the western Atlantic be increased from 1,750 tonnes to 2,000 tonnes. The other countries in attendance said no.

The government did not respond Monday to questions about its position. Environmentalists say Canada is clearly offside with the international community when it comes to bluefin conservation.

“I think it is fair to say that there was a general feeling across the meeting that [Canada’s proposal] was out of step, that there was very clear scientific advice that said maintain the quotas,” said Amanda Nickson, the director of the U.S.-based Pew Environmental Group’s global tuna conservation program, who was in Morocco for the gathering.

“The least risk to the population is to maintain the quota at 1,750 tonnes,” Ms. Nickson said. “And the feeling in the room was all in line with that, with the exception of Canada and their proposal.”

But, even if Canada didn’t manage to increase the bluefin quota, it successfully defeated a move by the European Union to require that any porbeagle shark caught in an ICCAT fishery be released, said Pew shark expert Elizabeth Wilson.

“Unfortunately that proposal was not something that Canada was willing to accept,” Ms. Wilson said. “We were hearing that there were some other countries that, when they heard rumours of things like an exemption for Canada, they said ‘Well, if Canada is going to get an exemption, we want an exemption too.’ And then the whole thing starts to fall apart.”

The porbeagle is also known as “Canada’s shark.” Like the bluefin, it has been declared endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada and is awaiting a designation under the country’s Species At Risk Act.

Overfishing of the porbeagle, which started in the 1960s, reduced its population by about 90 per cent over four decades but quotas have started it on the road to recovery.

As for the bluefin, its population on the East Coast has been severely depleted and currently stands at about 36 per cent of the 1970s levels. Japanese sushi aficionados consider it a delicacy and it can retail for upwards of $1,000 a pound, which makes it a valuable catch for East Coast fishermen.

Robert Chisholm, fisheries critic for the federal New Democrats, said it is critical that players on all sides of the Atlantic work co-operatively on the preservation of fish species.

“I am concerned about the obstreperousness of our negotiators because things aren’t getting resolved,” he said. “I know how important the bluefin tuna is to many communities on the Atlantic coast. But we’ve got to work with those organizations that have a mandate to conserve the stocks, to manage the stocks, and we’ve got to make sure that the fishermen and communities that count on that resource are going to be able to count on it for many years into the future.”

PORBEAGLE SHARKS

Potential threat to human beings: Not much. None have ever been implicated in unprovoked attacks on humans.

Size: Up to 3.7 metres (12 feet)

Lifespan: 25-46 years

Reproductive cycle: Oddly mirrors that of humans. Females become fertile at 13 and have a gestation period of about nine months.

Status under the Species At Risk Act: Endangered

Population estimate: 180,000 in the Northwest Atlantic. The sharks have lost 90 per cent of their population in the past 40 years.

The decline of the species: The porbeagle is one of the fastest swimmers in the sea but its numbers were severely depleted by overfishing in the 1960s, especially by the Norwegians.

The return of the species: Quotas that were introduced in 1998 and then cut in 2001 and 2006 have started to bring it back.

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Clownfish, the orange-, black- and white-striped fish made famous in the movie "Finding Nemo," are a gossipy bunch, popping and clicking amid their anemone homes to defend and reinforce their social status, according to new research.Unlike the 360 other species of territorial marine fish in the Pomacentridae family,clownfish don't make a peep when mating. Researchers wondering why clownfish would bother to make noise in other circumstances discovered that their chatter helps maintain the rank and file among group members.

"Sound could be an interesting strategy for preventing conflict between group members," lead study author Orphal Colleye, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Liège, Belgium, told LiveScience. "In terms of cost energy, you don't have to interact with another individual to determine which is the dominant and which is the subordinate, you just need to make a sound."

Clownfish have an unusual home life: Up to six fish form a group around a single sea anemone. The largest of the group is a female, the second largest is a male, and the rest are immature fish that do not have a gender. (Once they do, they will be able to change their gender as mating pairs die out.)

The researchers found that the larger clownfish that dominate the social circles with aggressive moves, such as chasing and charging, make popping sounds distinct from the static-like sounds of the smaller, more submissive clownfish. [Spectacular Photos of Sea Creatures]

Both in the wild and in captivity, a single clownfish can make both sounds: a pop toward a smaller fish, a click toward a larger fish.

"In general, fish don't make sounds unless they have a specific need to, because sound production potentially invites predators. The question then is, Why do they need to make sounds during aggressive interactions? Why risk advertising to predators then?" said University of Massachusetts professor Rodney Rountree, a fish acoustics expert,who was not involved in the study.

Colleye said the sounds are unlikely to endanger clownfish since they live symbiotically with sea anemones, which would sting any invaders.

"This fish lives in groups in the sea anemone and they are protected by it," Colleye said.

Deciphering fish sounds

Researchers also hypothesize that individual clownfish make slightly different sounds from each other, both in frequency and duration, as a way to reinforce their individuality.

However, that interpretation is open to question, since the signals of the submissive clownfish sound very similar. [Listen to clownfish chatter]

"It's unclear to me what aspect of the signal distinguishes two individuals of the same size (though I note that in natural groups there are rarely two individuals of similar size)," Paul Buston, a biology professor at Boston University who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email.

Colleye said the researchers next would separate a mating pair in different tanks and then test visual, chemical and acoustic factors in identifying individuals.

The researchers also plan to examine the factors that underlie a clownfish's ability to change gender. If the dominant female dies, the male becomes the alpha female and the next largest in size becomes the breeding male. What factors, chemical, visual or auditory, cause this to happen are currently unknown.

However, for mating, sound is not necessary. "The male doesn’t need to produce sounds to attract females; there is no competitor," Colleye said.

The research appeared today (Nov. 7) in the online journal PLoS ONE.

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In Ireland, optimism is in the air

Ireland — There are no people on Earth as romantic as the French. No one is punctual like the Swiss. The Germans have defined a sense of order. The Italians know how to eat. And no one, I mean no one, does misery like the Irish.

Ireland's well-chronicled story of rags to riches to rags again is a cautionary tale of the early 21st century. A country reared on hardship, famine and oppression has, after a brief turn in the economic sun, been cast back into the misty gloom of struggle.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Ireland: In the Sept. 30 Travel section, an information box accompanying an article about Ireland said that prices for a double room at Ashford Castle range from $114. That rate is per person. The article also said that the $486 airfare to Dublin, Ireland, included taxes and fees. It did not. The correct airfare, including taxes and fees, is about $1,000. —

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But lately I've begun to notice that a mischievous quality has sneaked in under the cloak of misery the Irish have put back on with disarming ease after the good times ended. There is still plenty of suffering to go around, but the place has begun to get a buzz about it again — one that reminds me of the country I knew and loved so well.

PHOTOS: Ireland

I first landed in Ireland 25 years ago, and as it is today, The Misery was on the land. The '80s were a dreary time of inflation, double-digit interest rates and a stagnant economy.

Yet the very direness of the situation swung doors wide to me that might never have opened had the people's necessity not dictated. I paid strangers just a few pounds to sleep in their spare rooms. I ate breakfast at the family table and in the evening watched the Rose of Tralee beauty contest on a black-and-white television beside a mother and father with a vested interest.

Of course, I drank too much in smoky and welcoming pubs, and I played bad golf on wild, spectacular and deserted courses. For a few hundred dollars I joined one such club in Lahinch, and to this day I receive my annual bag tag, one of my most prized possessions.

I returned to Ireland every year — until I missed a year, and then another, and then nearly a decade had passed. When I finally returned, the economic upturn known as the Celtic Tiger had begun its voracious assault on the land — a change that seemed at first as miraculous as it did unlikely.

Changing fortunes

Within a few years at the turn of this century, Ireland began to transform from a charming bog to the poster child ofEuropean Union dreams. Farmers put down their beloved Guinness and picked up Pinot Grigio. Dublin morphed from a dank backwater into a sophisticated metropolis. Helicopters were chartered to fly across the country for a lunch of fresh Galway oysters at Moran's, and then back to the posh suburb of Dalkey in time for dinner. Property prices soared, and credit was easy. The going was good.

I too succumbed to the fever that was gripping the land and bought a home. Yet from my outsider's perspective, something in the auld sod was being lost along the way to prosperity. The pubs banned smoking, but the warm welcome also seemed to go up in smoke. The playful twinkle in the eye and the friendly slag were replaced by an aloof disinterest. The good-natured blarney had become boasting bluster.

Neither people nor countries get rich quick gracefully, I concluded. I was glad the Irish were finally having their moment in the sun, but for me, the place had begun to lose its magic.

And then it all went to hell. Seemingly overnight, housing prices plummeted (and are down 55% from their height in 2007). Unemployment recently hit 14.9%. Many of the Eastern European laborers who had flooded the land have gone home.

The Irish have been left alone to nurse a vicious hangover.

Yet in the midst of all this hardship something strange has begun to happen: The restaurants appear packed again, pubs are overflowing onto the street, there's laughter around town. Could the Irish really be rising up and dusting themselves off?

Is this just wishful thinking on my part — a desire to recapture an earlier time of innocence? I decide to head to the one place in Ireland a man goes when looking for answers to life's bigger questions.

At the bustling bar in Kehoe's Pub on South Anne Street in Dublin, the Guinness is flowing and the chat is in full swing. On first glance, not much has changed since the gold rush days of 2004.

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Last Starbucks Standing During Hurricane Sandy Mobbed By Thirsty Midtown Caffeine Addicts

Hordes of people traipsed to midtown Manhattan Monday, traveling by foot and by cab to stand in long lines for an important commodity that Hurricane Sandy had made suddenly scarce.

The must-have item was neither batteries nor bottled water, however: These New Yorkers had journeyed to Times Square for Starbucks coffee.

"It was scary not having Starbucks,” said Bethany Owings, who told the New York Post she walked 10 blocks with her 18-month-old daughter Ava to get her daily dose.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks Corp. closed all of its New York City and Long Island locations at 4 p.m. Sunday so its employees could return homebefore the MTA shut down all trains.

Stores were supposed to remain closed on Monday, but the Starbucks on the main floor of the Marriott Marquis on West 45th Street was catering to a steady stream of caffeine-obsessed patrons.

Owings told the Post she found out about the rogue store via Facebook, but word spread quickly on other social media networks, including Twitter.

For those who made the trip, the long lines were a small price to pay. Alex Mwangi, a Starbucks "gold card" holder, walked more than 20 blocks looking for a store -- a trek he said was totally worth it.

“I’m a Starbucks fanatic," he told The New York Post. "I go four or five times a day. I like the way they make their coffee and the way they present it to you. Elsewhere is standard, regular coffee.”

Other chains like Dunkin Donuts were closed on Monday, Gothamist reports.

However, those closings meant more business for shops that planned to stay open during the storm.

When local 7-Eleven manager Khagendra Bhattarai heard the Dunkin Donuts across the street would be shutting its doors, he immediately put on extra coffee. He told The Huffington Post he planned to stay open all night.

Visit The New York Post to read what other "coffee junkies" had to say about getting their Starbucks fix.

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Jordan's Petra Is Still Alluring Two Centuries Later

Petra's entrance is waking up from its reverie, its rock-cut tombs, temples and rose red walls sleepy with shadows. Even the alley leading up to the entrance gate, typically flanked with busy hawkish vendors, is starkly quiet. Morning is still in Petra.

A group of adventurers, eager to get that crack Canon shot, visit Petra at sunrise. We're all too eager to capture the Treasury being slowly bathed in pure sunlight. It would appear that we couldn't get enough of this structure, even 200 years after the Swiss Explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt discovered the tomb studded valley deep in the heart of Jordan in 1812.

Now, decades later, Petra is the jewel that everyone who visits Jordan comes to see, despite the country's vast other treasures. I walk down the long gravel path, past Bedouins peddling horse rides, to the long and gracefully winding Siq. Arabic for "shaft", the Siq is the main entrance to the ancient city -- a teaser. Dimly lit, endlessly fascinating and smoothed down by water erosion, the sinuous cobblestone path is like an endless trailer to a spectacular Feature Film, although the trailer is long and the suspense mind-numbing. The Siq is so narrow in places that you feel as the striated walls are determined to touch each other. In the early morning, the sounds of the few visitors reverberate, ricochet off the rose-red walls.

I talk to a French couple whose gaze, much like mine, fixates on the crack of blue sky above us. "We are stunned, it is more beautiful than we thought it would be," one says. And we're not even at the Treasury yet.

The Nabataeans who were heavily into merchant trading, established a presence in Petra as early as 312 B.C. as a stronghold of their caravan route. These were avant-guard thinkers and "the world's earliest publicists," our tour guide jokes, gesturing towards the latte colored gods and goddesses studding the Treasury. These were nods to Greece, Rome and Nabataean culture. Marketing managers can still learn from Petra today: the tradesmen wanted to please many, and alienate none.

Like the illustrious Egyptians, the Nabataeans built Petra as a grandiose sign of respect for their deceased.

In this aspect, a visit to Petra could have been creepy: these are glorious tombs after all. But while they were formerly filled with mummy like bodies and treasures, they are now empty, concealing nothing but shadows, cobwebs, memories.

I walk down the Siq carefully but eagerly, taking care not to get in the way of several Roman style, passenger-laden chariots that come careening down the path. The rather expensive entrance ticket includes the price of a horse ride to the Treasury, and visitors can clip clop their way to the main attraction. The opulently-decked chariots, a nod to the Roman civilization that was a stronghold in Jordan, except that the Romans did not take over Petra (the fact that Petra remained somewhat independent until an earthquake in 747 AD).

The main tomb, Al Khazneh, first seen narrowly through a bend in the Siq, is mirage-like. I rub my overworked eyes: the structure is much larger than you've anticipated, studded into the sandstone cliff like an unannounced but welcome visitor. There is a giant urn on top of the Treasury, and the initial settlers though that this urn contained gold, so they started shooting at it. But alas, no gold was found.

The Treasury is just one of the surprises; I walk past it and see a Malthusian explosion of tombs carved in rock, in the open air. At one end of Petra lies a Crusader-period castle, near the tomb that is popularly known as "the Monastery." I climb 900 well-worn and smooth stone steps, looking back at the valley, and catch my breath. The view is unforgettable.

More than anything else, I feel a deep sense of living history. After all, I'm walking on paths and staring at carvings that date back to 300 BC. To really appreciate the phrase "cradle of civilization," it is essential to walk the path the Nabataeans once did. The marvelous thing is that Petra still stands so pristine and intact, after thousands of years.

Here too, are encounters with historical artifacts. A frail old man sits in a corner, playing the rebab, one of the oldest musical instruments in the Arabic world. A bowed instrument, its strings are made from horse tail hair. He plays it with such soul: Petra becomes Carnegie Hall to us, and we watch him pour his heart into music stemming from just a few strings. Every area of this valley has a story to tell, and most of the stories are timeless.

The sun finally rises and bathes the Treasury with a gentle gold light, and one by one, statue after statue, the structure comes to life and unfolds like a tale from Scheherazade. It is a magical moment, and one that I am glad I came so early to see.

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Happy Second Birthday Windows Phone 7- This Is Your Life

Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s big return to the smartphone stage after Windows Mobile’s gradual decline and demise, turns two today, according to a tweet by Joel Belfiore, Microsoft’s head of Windows Phone product definition and design. So I thought it would be fitting to take a look back at Windows Phone 7′s life up until now, and what the mobile OS has or hasn’t done for Microsoft so far.

On October 21, 2010, the first Windows Phone 7 handsets officially went on sale in New Zealand, Australia and parts of Europe and Asia. 10 launch devices brought the mobile OS to users, made by HTC, Dell, Samsung and LG (early highlights of the lineup included the LG Optimus 7, Samsung Omnia 7 and HTC HD7), spanning 60 carriers in 30 countries, and expanding to more in 2011. Early sales were promising in some markets, and even generated lines according to an AT&T spokesman, but overall failed to impress, with only 40,000 total units reportedly sold in the first day of U.S. availability.

In December, Microsoft Corporate VP of the Mobile Communications Business and Marketing Group Achim Berg revealed in an interview posted to Microsoft’s official blog that Microsoft had sold over 1.5 million devices – but that was to carrier partners, not sales through to customers, which meant there was no telling how much of that was sitting on store shelves or in stock storerooms. Berg hedged against potential criticism in that interview, saying that Windows Phone 7′s “numbers [were] similar to the performance of other first generation mobile platforms.”

The news didn’t improve terribly in January the following year, when Microsoft announced passing the2 million mark about 10 weeks after its Windows Phone 7 launch, but again, those numbers were to retailers, not overall sales to customers. By most accounts, users seemed pleased with the OS, but growth rates still looked to be a considerable challenge.

A month later, in February 2011, Nokia and Microsoft announced a broad partnership, with the aim of using Nokia’s hardware expertise to boost Microsoft’s struggling mobile OS. The idea seemed sound: Nokia was enjoying flagging fortunes in the worldwide handset market, having trouble competing with Android and iOS device gains, and Microsoft needed a focused hardware partner it could work closely with to both guide the future Windows Phone’s software design, and also make sure device/OS integration was as tight as possible. Here are three crucial bullet points from the press release announcing the arrangement:

• Nokia would adopt Windows Phone as its principal smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.
• Nokia would help drive the future of Windows Phone. Nokia would contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.
• Nokia and Microsoft would closely collaborate on joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products.

It was a bold move on both sides, and one that seemed on the surface to have at least some potential to help both companies rally in the increasingly competitive mobile ecosystem. But it would take until October before consumers got any inkling of what kind of hardware we’d see from the partnership, with the official unveiling of the Nokia Lumia 800, and another month after that before it would ship to consumers. The Lumia 800 was fairly well-received by reviewers, and included Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango,” a significant update that brought a number of features to the OS users thought were missing in the original release. Mango also made it to a lineup of other devices from manufacturers besides Nokia, though by this time, it already seemed like some of Microsoft’s other hardware partners might be losing interest, owing to its special relationship with Nokia.

Nokia Windows Phone 7 sales failed to impress, and Microsoft remained mum on the subjectduring the first conference call it had following the Mango device launches, which wasn’t reassuring anyone. Then, in June, Microsoft essentially dealt Windows Phone 7 a killing blow, saying that it wouldn’t be possible to upgrade devices running Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8. They announced Windows Phone 7.8 at the same time, which would bring some functionality from the newer OS to older devices, but the damage it did to existing hardware sales was evident in Nokia’s most recent earnings, as it only sold 2.9 million Lumia devices, with its smartphone sales overall taking a sizeable blow.

In July 2012, a Nielsen report put Windows Phone 7′s market share relative to other smartphone operating systems at just 1.3 percent, and predictions from analysts at the time only saw it rising to around 4 percent by end of year. Windows Phone 8 will prove important for Microsoft in terms of its ability to gain ground on the other mobile operating systems out there, and at least one analyst firm believes Windows Phone will still become the second most popular smartphone OS by 2016. As for Windows Phone 7, it will live on in 7.8 updates pushed out to existing owners of Lumia and other devices, but for all intents and purposes, it’s on the path to oblivion. But despite not taking the world by storm, Windows Phone 7 may have paved the way for a return to mobile prominence for Microsoft, even if it’s hard to see that happening based on the current state of affairs.

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Beluga whale 'makes human-like sounds'

Researchers in the US have been shocked to discover a beluga whale whose vocalisations were remarkably close to human speech.

While dolphins have been taught to mimic the pattern and durations of sounds in human speech, no animal has spontaneously tried such mimicry.

But researchers heard a nine-year-old whale named NOC make sounds octaves below normal, in clipped bursts.

The researchers outline in Current Biologyjust how NOC did it.

The first mystery, though, was figuring out where the sound was coming from.

When a diver at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in California surfaced saying, "Who told me to get out?" the researchers there knew they had another example on their hands.

The whales are known as "canaries of the sea" for their high-pitched chirps, but while a number of anecdotal reports have described whales making human-like speech, none had ever been recorded.

Once they identified NOC as the culprit, they caught it on tape.

They found that vocal bursts averaged about three per second, with pauses reminiscent of human speech. Analysis of the recordings showed that the frequencies within them were spread out into "harmonics" in a way very unlike whales' normal vocalisations and more like those of humans.

They then rewarded NOC for the speech-like sounds to teach him to make them on command and fitted him with a pressure transducer within his nasal cavity, where sounds are produced, to monitor just what was going on.

They found that he was able to rapidly change the pressure within his nasal cavity to produce the sounds.

To amplify the comparatively low-frequency parts of the vocalisations, he over-inflated what is known at the vestibular sac in his blowhole - which normally acts to stop water entering the lungs.

In short, the mimicry was no easy task for NOC.

"Our observations suggest that the whale had to modify its vocal mechanics in order to make the speech-like sounds," said Sam Ridgway, president of the National Marine Mammal Foundation and lead author on the paper.

"The sounds we heard were clearly an example of vocal learning by the white whale."

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Dinosaur 'thief' arrested in Florida

NEW YORK — A US man accused of smuggling 70 million year old dinosaur skeletons into the United States, including a toothy relative of the bigger Tyrannosaurus rex, was arrested on Wednesday in Florida, officials said.

Eric Prokopi, 38, was charged with conspiracy to smuggle illegal goods, smuggling into the United States, and selling stolen goods, which carry possible sentences of five, 20 and 10 years in prison respectively.

New York chief federal prosecutor Preet Bharara called Prokopi a "one-man black market in prehistoric fossils" and said the earlier seizure of a Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton from the Florida dealer was "merely the tip of the iceberg."

Prokopi tried to sell the Tyrannosaurus bataar at auction in New York in May this year, but Mongolia's government claimed the bones were illegally removed from the Central Asian country and could not be sold. US authorities impounded the remains shortly after.

Prokopi, who has denied trafficking, spent a year restoring and remounting what had been a loose collection of bones to recreate the skeleton, said Heritage Auctions, which attempted to sell the dinosaur on his behalf.

The Florida dealer is also accused of illegally importing a Saurolophus angustirostris skeleton from Mongolia and a Microraptor skeleton from China.

He was expected to appear Wednesday before a federal court in Gainesville, Florida, but also in New York federal court on October 22, Bharara said.

Bharara told the presiding Florida judge that strict conditions should be put on Prokopi's bail, because "the allegations against the defendant are unusual. Among other things, the Complaint sets forth a pattern of frequent international travel and manipulation of United States customs forms."

"Overall, there is a significant risk of flight," Bharara concluded.

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